Bare Knuckle Boxing in the Mississippi Back Woods

To find America’s first sports hero, look up John L. Sullivan, the Boston pugilist who for ten years, beginning in 1881, bested every man he faced—from Irish gangsters on torch-lit barges to heavyweights in Madison Square Garden. He traveled the country by private railroad car with a standing offer of $500 for any man who could last four rounds in the ring with him. Coal stokers, iron puddlers, and local strongmen gave Sullivan their best shot and were knocked flat on their backs for their troubles.

He was the Mike Tyson of the Gilded Age, more Paul Bunyan than Babe Ruth, but his legend might have faded if it wasn’t for an epic seventy-five-round, bare-knuckle brawl with Jake Kilrain, staged in the summer of 1889 on a Mississippi saw mill. A hundred and seventeen years later, the spot is nearly lost to the murk of history.